Techcitement Review: Samsung Stratosphere Needs More Rocket Power

The Samsung Stratosphere brings a combination of features to the table that I’ve been waiting to see all year. All I’ve been hoping for by the time my upgrade rolls around are the blazing fast LTE speeds on Verizon combined with a decent hardware keyboard like the one I remember so fondly from my Blackberry days. Sadly, while the Stratosphere promises both, it seems to deliver neither.

The Stratosphere is thicker than most smartphones these days, but that’s not a surprise. LTE phones are notoriously thick, and this one adds a slide-out QWERTY keyboard too.

Given those features, it’s not as huge as I’d have expected. The back of the device has a slight hump at the top and bottom, but it’s slight enough to be unnoticeable most of the time. Samsung seems to like adding these extra contours to their devices for no particular reason, but at least this time it didn’t make the phone any less appealing. The textured back panel makes for a solid grip, and makes the device a breeze to slide open one-handed. It’s not as solid feeling as the Motorola Droid 2’s mechanism, but by no means does it feel cheap or fragile. The phone also has more weight to it than many Samsung devices, leading to a general feeling of quality build.

The keyboard was a major disappointment. The square, flat keys make touch typing virtually impossible. They don’t rise high enough above the surface to be noticed individually, and they aren’t even as well spaced apart as the round keys on the Gravity Smart. I found myself relying exclusively on the pre-installed Swype keyboard. Given that the keyboard is this device’s greatest differentiator from some of the higher-end Verizon models, this speaks volumes about the usefulness of the Stratosphere in Verizon’s nearly endless lineup of smartphones.

The Stratosphere is also one of Verizon’s first mid-range LTE devices, priced at $149.99, roughly half the starting price of devices like the Motorola Droid Razr and HTC Rezound. You do pay a penalty in specs for the lower price, but it’s not as steep a drop as it could have been. Samsung promotes the Stratosphere as a Galaxy S phone, and that’s basically what you end up getting. This is essentially the LTE version of Sprint’s Epic 4G. The Stratosphere has the same 1 GHz processor, Super AMOLED display (it’s missing the Plus of the Droid Charge, but looks amazing), and 5 MP rear camera. The front-facing camera is improved to 1.3 MP, but you only get a 4 GB micro-SD card pre-installed. These aren’t cutting edge specs by any means, but they’re plenty for a smooth Android experience under most circumstances, from web browsing to streaming Netflix.

Battery life, on the other hand, was probably the single worst feature of this phone. That’s not actually the battery’s fault. Rated at 1800 mAH, I expected the battery to deliver even better performance than what I saw in the Droid Charge. Unfortunately, the LTE radio proved to be unreliable, dropping me down to a 3G connection in places that previously had good 4G reception. This happened with alarming regularity and meant the phone constantly drained itself searching for an LTE signal. The Stratosphere brings all the battery life issues of LTE to the table and more, but often leaves behind the advantages. It doesn’t seem worth the discounted price when an extra $50 gets you the far more reliable LTE of the Droid Charge or the slower but longer-lasting 3G of the Droid 3.

On the software side, Samsung has once again buried a great OS under its TouchWiz user interface. Samsung is clearly trying to improve the software’s usability (though not its cartoon-like appearance), but there are times when I wonder whether they test some of the changes they make.

For example I really appreciate the new option to organize apps in the main app drawer however you want. Putting frequently used apps on the first page, while hiding less-used ones farther back, is a useful feature that saves me home screen space. But the Stratosphere comes with a lot of apps already in the menu, and the first thing I do when I get a new device is install a bunch of my own favorites. So it would be really nice to see an option to alphabetize the app drawer. Instead, everything gets piled in based on the order it was installed in. A couple of dozen apps later it becomes impossible to find anything. Once again I can only recommend a custom launcher instead of the Samsung default.

Then there’s the new WiFi notification. The one feature of Touchwiz I really like is the wonderful power widget in the notification shade, allowing easy access to enable or disable five common functions like Bluetooth or GPS. A WiFi button on that widget would be great, allowing users to save battery by turning off WiFi on the go and turning it back on again when near a hotspot. WiFi could easily have replaced airplane mode (accessible via a long-press of the power button) on the widget. Instead, Samsung gave WiFi an entire notification of its own. That shade doesn’t have room for a lot to begin with, and the TouchWiz widget already costs a nice chunk of the available real estate. It’s worth it, because there’s so much functionality there. But if my WiFi is off, I don’t need a notification permanently telling me it’s off. I like the notification all Android devices give that a hotspot is in range, but if I don’t plan on using that hotspot, I can turn off WiFi and the notification disappears. Not so on the new TouchWiz. And even worse, the notification remains even when connected to a WiFi network. The only thing I need less than a notification that my WiFi is off is one that my WiFi is on and working normally.

I do have to give Samsung credit for integrating the messaging app with Google Voice. I’m still not a fan of the four fixed icons on the TouchWiz home screen, but at least this one accommodates one of the major changes many Android users make to their devices. Unfortunately, it only seems to receive Google Voice messages. As far as I can tell, if you want to send a text from your Google Voice number, you still need the Google Voice app.

Call quality is reasonably good on the Stratosphere. Not the best clarity available, but not poor enough to cause any real complaint either. Unlike LTE, the 3G connectivity was excellent, so interference and dropped calls weren’t an issue.

I’m pleased to say that Samsung has loaded the Stratosphere with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), which was until very recently the newest version available. I would hope to see it get an upgrade to 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) in the near future, but I don’t really anticipate that happening. This is a second-tier device, running hardware a year behind at launch, and Samsung isn’t known for their prompt update schedule even on premier phones. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the Stratosphere permanently stuck at 2.3 or waiting a long time for an upgrade. If Ice Cream Sandwich has features you want or you just feel like you need to have the latest software, I’d advise against betting on this handset to have it.

If you’re looking to hack your device, the Stratosphere has already been rooted. There are no custom ROMs yet that I could find, but that’s not unusual with new devices, especially those with LTE radios, which are something of an unknown quantity to the developer community.

The Stratosphere looks to be the only LTE device with a keyboard available for the foreseeable future. If that’s really a combination you need, this is your one and only option. But if you ask me, I’d say you’re better off getting used to an on-screen keyboard or waiting until your next device for LTE. Verizon has solid options in both directions. If you’re willing to wait long enough, there are even rumors about an LTE capable Droid 4 coming next summer. But if battery life or a really great keyboard are part of your buying decision, I can’t recommend the Stratosphere.